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Sunday, January 29, 2017

Trumka and the Women's March: "Forward" he Shouts From the Rear

"Brethren we conjure you...not to
believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your
employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things,
hostile and irreconcilable.Then do not
look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come
from ourselves.It is useless to expect
it from those whom our labors enrich." *

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I was talking to a
friend of mine about the Women’s march in Washington DC.She is a long-time union activist who has a
strong record of fighting for workers’ rights.She told me that her
union made very little effort if any at all, to mobilize women members or anyone else for
the march. Here is an official statement from Richard Trumka the AFL-CIO
president sent out on January 18th, two days before the march.

AFL-CIO Proud to Partner with the Women’s March on
Washington

January 18, 2017

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on the
Women’s March on Washington:

The AFL-CIO is proud to support the Women’s March on
Washington. Thousands of our 12.5 million members—women and men alike—will come
together this weekend to stand up for gender justice, equality and opportunity
for all.

The incoming Administration and Congress—both in words and actions—pose a
serious threat to these core labor values. So we are mobilizing for an economy
that works for all of us, including strong unions, equal pay and health care
for all, and renewing our pledge for women’s rights, just immigration and
racial justice.

Working people know this is not the time to retreat. Women’s
rights are workers’ rights. We are ready to march, fight and win.

Contact: Jasmine Nazarett (202) 637-5018 end

The only aspect of this statement that is accurate is that
Trump and his gang “pose a serious
threat” to labor and its goals for
“….gender justice, equality and opportunity for all.” As far as “support” that the AFL-CIO is talking
about, it’s non-existent. Telling someone “good
luck” when they’re about to be attacked by a tiger is support.

Very nice. Young workers, especially union members, get used
to terms like “we will work towards” and
“we will fight” when they are not
accompanied by how they plan to
fight or how they will “work” toward
building a better life for all. Maybe they’re appealing to St Jude, the patron
Saint of lost causes. Thanks for that but it’s about as useless as a long
tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

So far, Trumka and his colleagues have done just the
opposite; they have worked to ensure that a serious mobilization of their 12.5
million members doesn’t take place. They have worked to ensure that any
protests, any opposition to the intensified war on workers and the poor do not
disrupt business as usual, do not bring them in to conflict with their friends
in the Democratic Party or the bosses’ whose team they urge us all to be on. In
fact, do not threaten in any serious way, the system that is hurtling toward
the precipice threatening life as we know it on this planet, never mind the US.

In Trumka’s address he said the AFL-CIO was “mobilizing” its members for this.
That’s not what I heard. One female trade unionist told me she couldn’t even
get a contact list for her union’s female members in order to at least
encourage them to attend.“We were encouraged to attend by our union
leadership and that was it.” one member told me.

And did we see a massive throng of union banners at the
march headed up by the heads of the potentially powerful national unions? Were
the army of staffers they use to turn out the vote for the Democratic Party at
election time sent to every workplace, every union hall and door to door with
labor volunteers building a union presence for the march?

Of course not. The labor hierarchy fears nothing more than
victory as they are afraid of the inspiration it will bring to millions of
their members and non union members who will begin to see unions as a positive
thing that can make major changes in their lives, changes for the better.They are aware that they wont be able to
contain the anger that exists in society and that anger will also be directed
at them, their obscene salaries, their love affair with Democratic Party
politicians and its “liberal” billionaires, not to mention the employers whose
rights and profit making activity the union officialdom sees as sacrosanct.

Consequently, with their conscious refusal to organize,
despite their rhetoric, the demands of working class men and women and all
marginalized sectors of society were absent in the main, were not there to be
linked to the struggle for reproductive rights and equality for all, for jobs,
health care, housing education. The speakers and leading figures were
millionaires and film stars etc. I have to admit I only saw two speakers, Scarlet
Johansson who talked about her young daughter and Madonna, another member of the
super rich worth about $300 million, both Zionists who have not, to this
commentators knowledge, raised the murder and imprisonment of Palestinian
children by the Israeli regime when they visited that Apartheid state. Have
they visited Gaza?

As far as I can tell the only union official that spoke was George Gresham of SEIU 1199. I don't know what he said but he was also in there when the building trades leaders met with Trump I believe and they praised him. If he was there shame on him.

Here are a few links to some unions where I tried to find
comments and press releases about the march and what the union leadership was
going to do to help build it.

Trumka’s statement above is perhaps one of the best of the
do-nothings.

The heads of organized labor employ an army of staff to
ensure their positions are not threatened by uprisings from within the ranks.
Their job is to that carry out the pro-business policies of the leadership and
that their philosophy of “labor peace” enshrined in the Team Concept is
maintained.Many of these individuals
believe it or not come out of socialist and radical organizations. Often they
are university educated, very talented people. Some had good intentions
initially I’m sure, but they entered in to the lions den without protection, in
their case, a base among the ranks and a clear understanding of how to
fight.Most of them do not come from the
ranks and if they do, they never arose by building rank and file opposition
caucuses that can challenge for leadership.

They are too often brought in to the leadership from above not forced in from
below. I could name very familiar names as some of them now portray themselves
as great labor leaders or radicals.I
saw a woman from my labor council where I was a delegate some years ago. She
considered herself a radical as did the CP delegates there. Neither her or
others like her said a damn word in opposition to the leaderships positions as
workers were beaten down throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s.

She is now a well-paid regional director (or was last time I
saw her) for a major national union. That’s the reward for keeping your mouth
shut as workers are being savaged and our leaders do nothing.

Then we have the building trades leaders and Jimmy Hoffa,
the lawyer who heads up the Teamsters, praising Trump. A bunch of them met with
him as we have pointed out in previous posts.How disgusting is that! One
doesn’t “work with” an enemy of the
working class, one “works against” an
enemy of the working class.

I have been in three sets of negotiations for my local. Many
years ago I took a class from a “professional” negotiator. I spent half
an hour in it, why would I want to go to a class to learn “concession bargaining”?I
was also told that the bosses’ allocate only so much money to labor costs and I
could see that the general view was that we were there as representatives of
workers to divvy it up. But we start from a position of what we want and need
to live decent lives not what the bosses want. How much and what we win depends
on the balance of class forces, and it can also determine how much we lose. Thereader can read the assessment we published after the last negotiations I wasin at the top of this blog.

Of course there are times when we retreat when the balance
of class forces are not in our favor. But we don’t retreat before we fight and
when we do, we do it with the collective understanding that we have to prepare
our forces, build and widen our movement to encompass all issues affecting
workers, and come back strengthened. In other words, we fight to win.

The same must be applied to the inevitable struggle against
the concessionary policies of the present union leadership. We are in a war on
two fronts. One is against the bosses’ which is relatively easy in some ways.
The other, and more difficult is the internal struggle to change out unions.

We cannot avoid either of them.

Negotiations are a euphemism for
capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table. George
Schultz

* 1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellows to abandon
the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people's
problems.Philip Foner History of the
Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192